Tip 103: Creative ways to entertain with Salmon!

With summer coming on, it's time to think about entertaining.  To make sure what you serve up is what everyone is talking about, take the time to do a little more with your Salmon this summer.  Here are a few tips:

Smoked Salmon: Ride a bike the wrong way up a street while under the influence of the weed.

Tinned Salmon: Ride a bike the wrong way up a street while wearing a suit of armour.

Salmon Roe: Ride the wrong way up Saville Row.   

Blini: Ride the wrong way up a street while covered in sour cream and riding a small flat bike made of buckwheat.  (Buckwheat recumbents are the latest in bamboo bike technology: likely to be hot this summer, but stale shortly thereafter).

BONUS TIP:

Salmon Mousse: if you really want to make an event to remember, trap a bull moose, tame and saddle it before riding it up a one way street in Alaska.

Tip 93: Ride to work day

It turns out you will enjoy the proliferation of bemused noobs, the silly outfits, even the bike traffic jams.
But you will have to endure your personal passion becoming the kind of fleeting obsession Justin Bieber should have been.

BONUS TIP: So how does it feel when you carved out a tiny cave and now everyone wants to visit it?

Well, there's the honey taste of vindication, mixed with bitter yearning for the space you used to have. Like a suitcase full of soup and another one of gelati, those flavours are hard to hold onto both at once.

Special Bonus Cadel's Mum picture!

Cadel's mum Helen  rides 20km to work and is a total bike hero in this town.

Tip 91: Fall in love with your bike path

It's got some dead leaves on it.
You love those leaves.
There's grass growing through a crack.
You love that grass, and you love the crack for giving that grass a chance.
There is some gravel on it.
You think the right amount of gravel is to the perfect bike path as the right amount of vegemite is to the perfect piece of toast.
It goes under a freeway, which is the finest rendering of the brutalist design theory you can imagine.
It has the *most* delectable series of gentle lefts and sweeping rights.
And sometimes there are birds flying around freely, as though this is a symbolic diorama made by a creator figure, and you a smiling, bicycle-riding creature made of pipe cleaners.

BONUS TIP: Treat that skinny strip of tarmac with respect and affection. Next time you are riding, take a moment. Dismount, sit down, and ask how it feels.  Then listen - really listen - to what it says.

Tip 69: Take your bike on a train

You'll be popular as a subway rat - and twice as nervous - as you ride the escalator and try not to let your big steel frame run down the masses.
Squeeze into the carriage and manouevre to that one spot where you're not blocking either door, then hold onto the ceiling with your outstretched fingertips.
BONUS TIP: Keep your helmet on until you get to your station. Those dirty glares could turn to violence any moment.

Tip 62: Carry something awkward

Sometimes you need to do cargo.
Unless your commute is to work as a double bassist in the symphony orchestra you're gonna struggle. Practice in advance of the unexpected.
Perhaps go by bike to fetch a new bath, buy a dozen cases of beer at the store, or ride your record-breaking squash to the county fair.

BONUS TIP: If you can carry more than 1000 bananas by bike, make sure you record the event and upload it to YouTube, because you are "hangin' with a cool bunch," as they say.

Tip 54: Sample marginalisation

White, educated, politically enfranchised, able-bodied, heterosexual male seeks:
Opportunity to be hated without reason, heckled and assaulted by those more powerful, treated with contempt by law-makers and picked on by law enforcement.

BONUS TIP: Shed your downtrodden status along with your bib shorts each morning when you arrive at the beautifully appointed cycling facilities at your law firm / IT company.

Tip 36: Obsess over your route.

Optimise Y

where Y 

= a*(smooth surfaces + efficient hypotenuses)

+

 b*(bikepaths)*(sneaky shortcuts)

- 

c*(drunk pedestrians + slippery tramtracks)

+ 

d*(long fast downhills / steep sweaty uphills)

-

e*(taxis + cops + beer can-throwing SUV drivers + holier-than-thou vehicular cyclists)^2

+ 

f*(people to admire your style / avoiding that cafe where the cute waitress saw you fall off that time) 

-

h*(Red lights + puddles)

BONUS TIP: If maths is not your thing:  Optimal route-finding is a personal expression of the discourse between the cultural, politico-infrastructural and the physical. Discuss.

Tip 35: Pop a yoghurt

When that taxi changes lane and forces you into the gutter, your lunch, prepared this morning before dawn and stowed in your back basket, suffers from the rumbles of the cobbles.

Your apple bruises, your banana splits and your yoghurt explodes like Mt Vesuvius, spreading through your neatly folded work-wear, a fact to which you are none the wiser as you give the taxi driver a complete sign language alphabet full of gesticulations.

BONUS TIP: You will be cranky from having no lunch and are sporting dubious proteiny stains on your clothes. It goes without saying - avoid your boss.

Tip 32: See some colleagues naked

Capitalism's hidden heart is a reliance on humans' love for one another.

It is non-market transactions, internal to the firm, that dominate the economy.

This is where cycling fits into capitalism's cunning plan. When you get a daily eyeful of your colleagues' junk in the change rooms at work, a certain bond is forged. 

As it revulses, it creates a lattice of understanding and teamwork that strengthens the corporate behemoths.

BONUS TIP: When getting dressed, for the love of god, put your underpants on first. Why fuss over your windsor knot before you've even clad your nuts?